Create a Rocky Text Effect with Space Background in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Create a Rocky Text Effect with Space Background in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try :)

Along the way, we will be using some selection techniques, warping tool, refine edge filter, image adjustments and layer blending options. We will only be using one stock image for this whole text effect.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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Step 1

Create a new document sized 900px * 1270px with black background. Create a new layer and use the star brush we downloaded, paint some space background: (set brush opacity and flow to be around 40% for a subtle effect)

Create a new layer and use a font of your choice to type a letter on the centre of the canvas:

Load the rock texture into Photoshop, and go back to our letter layer and load its selection:

Select the rectangular marquee tool, click and drag the selection onto the rock texture and select a piece from it:

Copy and paste our selection onto the text to cover it, turn off the original text layer and you will have the effect as shown below:

Step 2

Use a soft eraser, gently remove some parts of the rock texture as shown below:

Sharpen this rock texture a bit with the following Unsharp Mask filter settings:

Then, add the following 3 adjustment layer as clipping mask to this rock layer:

Levels

Curves

Brightness and Contrast

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 3

Now we can apply some more rocky texture onto its base and make the text looks better. Go back to the rock image and select a piece of rock as shown below:

You can refine your selection with the refine edge filter (Ctrl + Alt + R) to smooth its edge:

Copy and paste the selection onto our texture, use a soft eraser to remove its edges and blend it in with the base texture:

Repeat the process above and add more rock texture onto the text:

Hint: leave some base texture exposed, this creates more depth. Also use the free transform tool to adjust the shape of the rock to join them together.

Step 4

Lets’s add some particles into the image. We can use the same rock texture and use the quick selection tool to select some rock pieces as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, resize and attach it to the rock text as shown below:

You can also apply some warping effect to the rock pieces to add some motion to the text:

Duplicate this warped layer a few times and attach them around the text:

Also make sure you use a soft eraser to fade the flying rocks into the background to add some depth:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 5

OK we’re almost done :) For some final adjustments, we can render some light cloud with the cloud filter, and paint some grungy texture around the texture:

We can paint some abstract lines with a 3px brush for extra effect:

We can flatten the image, and apply some light Unsharp Mask settings to bring out some more details for the rocks:

I also burned some part of the text with the burn tool to add some shadow to the text: (around 15% strength)

and here is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful :) Till next time, have a great day!

My name is James and I have been using Photoshop since version 5.0. I am the owner of this blog and writes majority of the Photoshop tutorials and articles. If you have any questions about the Photoshop tutorials, feel free to leave a comment and I will try my best to answer it.